Monday, September 3, 2012

Two Down, Three to Go!

In early October, we'll be attending a "mini family reunion" in Pennsylvania, where two of my nephews and their families have recently moved.  These young men have invited all their first cousins, aunts and uncles, mother and father, and siblings to spend a weekend at a charming inn in one of their new towns.

This is a great opportunity for me to present one great-niece with a belated Bat Mitzvah gift and the latest baby in our family, who has just passed her first birthday, with her baby quilt.

While I am "gifting" these girls, I thought I would make fleece throws for the other children in the baby's family.  So far, I've finished the Bat Mitzvah quilt and one of the throws.  This week I hope to finish the quilt for the baby.  Then I'll make the other two throws later in the month.

I've posted several times about my "Alice in Wonderland" quilt.  Now I am ready to show it completely finished.  It seems an appropriate gift for the Bat Mitzvah young woman, since she bears my name!  Both of us were named for my mother, her great-grandmother, who lived to the wonderful age of 90 and whom I was privileged to live around the corner from her from the time I was 31 until age 60.

I named this quilt with the quotation from ALICE IN WONDERLAND:  "Which way from here."  This seemed an appropriate title, both because of the scene depicted from ALICE and also because my great-niece, after the milestone of her Bat Mitzvah, is likely pondering "which way from here" for herself, as she is now a teenager and as so many life changes and decisions live ahead for her.  As mentioned in previous posts, I hand-embroidered the center panel, and then I very simply machine quilted the series of borders.

Fellow quilter and dear friend Patty actually added all the borders in a "brown bag" challenge sponsored by our quilt guild.  We participants put UFOs (unfinished quilting "objects") in a brown paper bag, we drew the unmarked bags, and then finished the quilts for our fellow quilters.  Patty did a superb job!

Here are the two gifts:

The Alice quilt

the fleece throw for another great-niece